


Cold

by nevtelenwriting



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Amnesia, Amputation, Blood, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Death, Gen, The Winter Soldier - Freeform, Torture, brain washing, loss of limb, lots of blood, lots of death, prosthetic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-15
Updated: 2014-04-15
Packaged: 2018-01-19 12:55:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1470610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevtelenwriting/pseuds/nevtelenwriting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everytime he is awoken, taken away from the cold, he remembers...something. Until it is stripped away.</p><p>(A look into The Winter Soldier's mind, from his fall, to each and every time he is prepped for a mission. Inspired by the new movie)</p><p>No real spoilers for Captain America: The Winter Soldier unless, well, you don't know who the Winter Soldier is.</p><p>Maybe-some-vague Steve/Bucky if you squint.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so creative with titles.
> 
> This was inspired after listening to the Winter Soldier Theme on the CA:TWS soundtrack. If you haven’t heard it yet, go give it a listen, it is absolutely wonderful and chilling and heartbreaking at the same time. I'm never heard a song fit a character so well before.
> 
> This drabble is supposed to match up with the song sound and pace, but I kinda gave up halfway through. You can listen to it while reading, or read it on its own!
> 
> You can listen to the song here: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSJpCbyZvsc)
> 
> Oh, and Russian translations are at the bottom of the work.

Cold. Agonizing cold seeping into his lungs, his limbs, his chest, numbing the torn, bleeding mess on his left side. He's too dizzy to remember what it's called, he just knows it's not there anymore. He hit the side of the mountain and it tore straight through the shoulder blade, snapped his elbow so he rolled when he tumbled down, crunching against rock and snow until he crumpled at the bottom. The snow falls in needles over his face, his limbs, turning blood bright around him. A mockery of the gentle flakes silence everything but his own heart beat. Everything is sharp, acute ice until the moment it isn't.

There is nothingness.

His heart slows down. He's lost so much blood. His vision blackens around the edges.

It's over, it's finally over, but he wishes he could have seen it to the end. He wishes _he_ hadn't had to watch him fall. _Sergeant Barnes, operation—_

Then words he does not understand.

He's being dragged away. He's too tired to protest, and he catches a glimpse of the stump that used to be...to be...he's so _tired_.

_Podgotov'te yego. U nas yest missiya dlya zimnovo soldata._

_Odin. Dva. Tri._

Three heart beats and he's awake, his heart picking up speed tenfold with each erratic thump until it thunders raw and electric when he is taken off the ice, heat burning through him too fast, too quickly. His entire body trembles with the sudden increase in awareness, temperature, life. It takes four hands to carry him out, and he stumbles, there is nothing on his left to give him balance, a memory of something he can't remember what it's called. And then heaviness, solid metal of clicking gears winding up and oiled from disuse, attached and tested for reaction as he's strapped down. He remembers what it is then. _Weapon_.

He doesn't know where he is, who he is, what he is. But for a split second, for a few moments, he can see shattered, frayed images—

—Gun fire and blood splattered on the ash caked landscapes of a country he doesn't know, and he wishes he was home, back home with the light shows and pretty faces, his arm slung around his best— But he's not there, he looks instead into the glassy eyes of a man he knows—knew, but there's too much blood—

_Sergeant Three-Two-Five-Five-Seven—_

—He can feel the imploding burn inside him, boiling his blood and melting his bones, a thousand fireworks replacing his nerve endings, bleeding fire into his muscles, they strip him of his name and rip him apart, tell him it will stop if he complies but he refuses to give in, Sergeant Three-Two-Five-Five-Seven—

_I thought you were dead._

He thought he was, too.

_I thought you were smaller._

He's perfect and shining and everything He ever wanted, ever deserved, and god, he _despises_ it, he hates himself for the burn of jealousy in his gut because he can't tell Him. Can't let Him know how much he hurts and aches inside his own skin, like a cancer but instead of fatigue he can't sleep, his heart pounds too quickly now and behind the black of his eyelids lies blood and pain and needles and German—Russian?—commands he doesn't know enough to follow. He gets bruises and cuts that heal in just enough less time than normal that it terrifies him, he can see further without his sight like he _is_ his rifle, he is nothing more than the scope on his gun and can't tell Him that he scratches at his own skin to _prove_ he's still human and not some fucked up nightmare, that he can still bleed, that he's just imagining it, Sergeant Three-Two-Five-Five-Seven but oh god, what comes after that—

_That little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb to run away from a fight._

He refuses to leave Him, even if He doesn't need him anymore, he still would never leave Him alone, he may have a reputation now but He's still vulnerable, He's still that kid he grew up with, so full of light while he was darkness. But he wants to go home and forget he was ever strapped to that table, he never even wanted to be in this godawful war but he couldn't get out, instead he watched man after man gunned down before his eyes, escorted from their cells to never come back until it was his turn, and the rooms bleed together, it's German and then it's Russian and sometimes he can feel the needles pierce his arm and sometimes he isn't all together, he doesn't know anything beyond the commands. He doesn't remember, but it doesn't matter—

_I had him on the ropes_

—He wants to go back to where the streets made sense, with their septic stench and people who would mug them for less than a quarter so he learned how to fight and keep his nose dirty so _H_ _e_ could keep his nose clean. He'd sully his name every waking moment if it made Him shine--

_Get out of here!_

Selfless—

_Punk._

Friend.

_No, not without you!_

He can't, he can't imagine a world without him in it, and he knows he's selfish, but—

_Jerk._

But he will always be there

_I'm with you—_

Until the end, his name is—

— _Tri dva odin_ three heartbeats and it's gone, he's strapped down with metal on metal and he has learned weeks, months, decades? Ago to submit unless he wants to feel more than the molten burn and lightening strike into his heart and into his brain. He opens his mouth obediently for the guard and then he's screaming, biting down on it instead of his tongue like he wants to, god, he wants to—he must obey, he can't refuse them—the images strip away one by one until he knows only the weight of the weapon attached to his body. They fry every cell until blinding whiteness overtakes his ability to scream, to cry, until he hears  _weaponmissionobey_  echoing in his head. _Obey. Obey._

He has no name, the faces he knew and gunfire echoing in his skull are replaced with an upgraded rifle, a list of orders and the profiles of his targets. He's as unclean as he's meant to be, their trigger to gun down each and every face burned into his memory by those who command him.

He doesn't question. He never questions. He isn't capable of anything but following, he is nothing beyond metal fingers aiming the barrel of a gun or the edge of a blade into the neck of his target. When blood spurts onto his mask, he does not respond. When they beg, he feels the corners of his mouth twitch. _Missiya vypolnena._ The glassy eyes that stare up into nothingness conjures no thought.

Sometimes he can hear the screams of a broken man in the back of his mind, begging him to stop, to let him die. He ignores it, until the screams become too much.

They tell him the man is a casualty of freedom. He has no reason to believe otherwise. And when he starts to see flickers of images again, when the screaming is accompanied by _Three-Two-Five—_ four hands shove him back in a box. He's doesn't want to but—but how can he say no— _Sergeant—_

_Odin. Dya. Tri._

His heart beat slows.

Cold.

**Author's Note:**

> Russian Translations:
> 
> Podgotov'te yego. U nas yest missiya dlya zimnovo soldata. = Prepare it. We have a mission for the winter soldier
> 
> Odin = One
> 
> Dva = Two
> 
> Tri = Three
> 
> Missiya vypolnena = Mission accomplished
> 
> Russian Translation fixed with help of whiskeyandspite. (Google translate and dictionary sites can only go so far). Thank you so much!


End file.
